The challenge:

WaterAid have an impressive goal: their aim is that by 2030, everyone, everywhere should have access to clean water and sanitation.

They asked us to design and build a tool they could use to promote the campaign to a target audience of ‘global citizens’, and recruit new support to their email list.

What we did:

Among the background information provided by WaterAid was the fact that not having access to sanitation can actually impact a person’s height. We quickly found that most people didn’t know this – and were shocked when they heard it – so the idea for our tool was born.

To make the topic personally relevant to a wide audience, we invited people to find out how much shorter they would be if they had grown up without adequate sanitation. We made the link between height and access to clean toilets clear from the start, and users were asked to input their height and gender to get their result.

Importantly, they were then invited to share their result on social media before we linked back to the campaign message and told people why a lack of sanitation can be so damaging.

The results:

“How much shorter?” had a 4.61% click-through rate. To put this into context, typically we see a click-through of around 1-2%! It also attracted 57,567 unique visitors and 19,850 email sign-ups – doubling our original target of 10,000.

GDPR work with WaterAid:

We have also been active in testing and improving WaterAid’s sign-up pages, focusing heavily on optimising opt-in rates as we prepare for the introduction of GDPR. Our testing has increased their opt-in rate by 26%, meaning that WaterAid will have more supporters to talk to about their important work when GDPR comes into play in May.